Image credit: Rockstar Games
The GTA 6 Extended Look is finally here, and clearly Rockstar has been working hard on the hotly anticipated open-world crime sandbox shooter. It’s been a staggering 13 years since the last entry in the franchise, and while the graphics and atmosphere look top-notch, it’s the newly refined combat system that has my attention. Sure, Red Dead Redemption II had fine shooting, but with its modern-day setting, the company has finally innovated on Max Payne 3‘s blueprint.
The grounded, more realistic combat in GTA 6
For all the hype of the Grand Theft Auto games, the one thing they’ve never really nailed is the gunplay. The core of the experience was that it was a complete open-world rendition of reality, never quite excelling in any one area, but offering the full scope. Driving, armed combat, melee fighting – it was all present and accounted for, and greater than the sum of its parts. Where GTA 6 differs from its predecessors (chiefly GTA IV and GTA V) is that it has learned from not only Max Payne 3 but also the litany of open-world games released since 2013.
That means the likes of Watch Dogs, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, and Mafia: Definitive Edition, to scratch the surface. It’s taken other companies over a decade to innovate on those core gameplay ideas, and while some of them did surpass GTA V in terms of realism, immersion, mission design, set pieces, characters, and combat, Rockstar itself had already struck oil when it took over the reins from Remedy for its Max Payne sequel in 2012.
Max Payne 3 is unflinching and brutal in its portrayal of violence. On a proper difficulty setting, you die in one or two bullets, although your enemies are just as vulnerable. Max has access to various pistols, submachine guns, and rifles, with a weapon wheel that would later be adopted into the Grand Theft Auto series. The GTA 6 Extended Look showcases the new grounded take on gun violence as Jason takes cover and dynamically picks off would-be attackers with a pistol, later finding a rifle on the ground to dispatch foes with, too. A direct parallel can be drawn from the fact that the combat scene ends with a Max Payne 3-style slow-motion finisher as well.
Speaking of bullet time, well, it’s present and accounted for in Grand Theft Auto 6, at least for Jason, as the new minimalistic HUD reveals both health and a timer in the top left-hand corner. Slow motion works just as it did with Michael’s special ability in GTA 5, or like with Max Payne 3, with the lack of jumping around. The GTA 6 Extended Look shows an instance of Jason finishing multiple enemies with time slowed, and it’s as savage as you may expect from the open-world crime sandbox.
Where GTA 6 looks to be more dynamic with its missions
With that said, the GTA 6 Extended Look event still showcases the action movie-esque action that was featured in the franchise’s previous entry. In particular, an extended sequence of Jason and Lucia fleeing a robbery. The protagonists shoot and drive their way out of the situation, and it’s here that we get to see just how far we’ve come in 13 long years. Jason’s shooting out the tyres of the police cars, and the vehicles are losing control, spinning out chaotically and exploding on impact; it’s every bit as chaotic and over the top as the series is known for. It doesn’t look like we’ll be getting the subtler, more grounded take, like GTA 4, here – shooting aside.
The main thing I wanted to know is how the revised combat system will factor into GTA 6 missions going forward. For as stellar an experience as Red Dead Redemption II was from an immersion and story perspective, the bulk of its missions boiled down to linear combat encounters and convenient chest-high cover, whether that was a barn door, a big boulder, a tree, or something else fitting the time period. Where Rockstar’s upcoming game seems to innovate here is how its combat environments are more diegetic, just like they were in Max Payne 3, serving the purpose of the action, rather than just being set dressing.
We see an example of this in the GTA 6 Extended Look when Jason and Lucia make their way to a pusher’s den on behalf of a mutual client in a shady part of town. We don’t have all the details; however, we know that there’s some double-crossing, as armed agents storm the building, meaning the pair have to fight for their lives to escape. The environments themselves are incredibly detailed: a series of dense, lived-in apartment buildings, made to be immersive, rather than just quick and easy cover, signalling that a gunfight or action setpiece is incoming.
This was true of Max Payne 3 as well. Lengthy cutscenes told the story, but when it was time for gameplay, every linear setpiece and shootout worked as part of the experience rather than in spite of it. How many times did a series of linear shooting galleries pop up and interrupt the flow of GTA 5 for you? You’re watching Michael, Trevor, and Franklin in conversation before you’re swarmed with wave after wave of nameless, faceless goons en masse until you’ve killed enough of them to move on to the next section. In summary, Rockstar’s game design was feeling massively outdated, even by 2013, and especially by 2018.
I hope that GTA 6 can follow the blueprint laid by Max Payne 3 further: impactful combat and missions that accommodate it, rather than being made around it. If Rockstar can pull that off over the duration of the game, then it could be among the series’ best entries. All looks pretty promising so far, and we are only having to wait a few more months before the long and storied break is finally over.
FAQs
The GTA 6 release date is November 19, 2026.
GTA 6 had a long development cycle due to the profitability of GTA Online, which has retained a healthy player base and revenue model for over a decade now.
The GTA 6 price is confirmed to be $79.99 for the Standard Edition and $99.99 for the Ultimate Edition.
Confirmed GTA 6 platforms are Xbox Series X/S and PS5. So far, no PC or Nintendo Switch 2 has been confirmed at this time, but they’re expected to be announced post-launch.
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